A lackluster performance
This week finally had us up against a team who was ranked below us in terms of SR (yes, I was given a spreadsheet with every teams Highest and Team average SR, it is nice to know we aren’t the lowest team in the division lol) so we were looking forward to a positive match up on the Saturday night. However, once again our opponents were a no show, giving us our 3rd win by default. While we don’t mind taking the default win, we want to play, we need to play, we need that game time against other teams if we want to improve. Each team only gets 10 games before the play offs start so every game is important. It is even harder for us since we are a new team and have really low ranks. Finding teams to scrim against at our level is really hard, the majority of teams looking to scrim in our league are all looking for Master teams or above. The lack of game time with each other is really starting to show esp with our Sunday night game albeit against a team whose record doesn’t reflect their ability.
Going up against ZeroDawn was going to be difficult. They are another team who are obviously serious about this, they also have a sister team in the division with all their players Masters and above. This alone would be enough to cause problems but the fact that they have obviously trained together for a long time proved too much for us. Going up against teams with such co-ordinated game play is hard enough for other teams at that level. For some silver/gold scrubs like ourselves, it is a near impossibility. Needless to say we did try and we were able to manage to get some headway at times when we did come together to make some big plays. Unfortunately we couldn’t capitilise on them and our lack of co-ordiantion provided our opponents with an easy 3-0 win
Control: Nepal
We have been improving a lot on control, our dive is coming together mostly but again, we get stuck when we are in tight spaces and lack the ability to focus down enemies. On Shrine we had a great chance to cap the point but lack of call outs allowed the enemy to trickle in to delay until their Genji built up his Ult and wrecked us (a common theme of the day). On Sanctum we got completely rolled going down 0-2. Enough said about that really.
Escort: Watch Point Gibraltor
On defense first we managed to start off ok, making a decent holding on the first point until the enemey got a couple of picks and scattered us to the 4 winds, once that happened we never regained our footing, being on the back foot every step of the way. Again, not grouping up to enter into even a single team fight saw our enemy push all the way through with relative ease. On attack we started off great and again had the team fight won shy of the first point, but the inability to finish off the fight and allowing the enemy team to trickle back in saw them stall the push just short on the first point. We got stalled out again and again trying to push thru and ended up being easily held out 0-3
Assault: Temple of Anubis
Anubis has been good to us in the past but today just wasn’t our day. On Defense first we tried to run the high ground with a split defense, it failed miserably as they were able to focus us down 1 by 1 very quickly losing the first point in record time. To add insult to injury they managed to snowball that onto point B. Our attack was just as weak, lack of coordination and just not enough leadership or direction saw us get totally wrecked and losing 0-2
After the match we decided to have a couple of comp games to try and practice a bit more together. After getting destroyed by such a higher ranked team, comp was a breeze, we managed to go on a 5 game winning streak. Losing only our last game after and epic 5-6 round of Junkertown, both teams pushing the cart right from the first point to the final point in OT, we ended up being 1m short. It was good to play more as a team but something we haven’t been doing enough of. The difference in play between normal comp and organised teams is like night and day.
Moving forward into our final week, we need to do better and as our captain that falls on to me to get our team calling and talking and coordinating better. Something I will just do this week around. At the moment I am hesitant to make those calls because we are all there to just play and learn and want to make everything ‘inclusive’ and I am still learning myself but it is time to put on the big boy pants and just say fuck it, this is what we are doing, now move! Also the Mercy nerf is here, this will change things drastically. Can we improve in our final week? Stay tuned!
akadjblaze 